Wednesday, December 30, 2009

The video below is of ex CIA agent Robert Baer discussing the terrorist attempt to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to the U.S. on Christmas Day. Interestingly enough, Baer predicted just such an attack three years ago. That this attack occurred shows serious systemic failures in our secruity apparatus, but that is not the real travesty. Do see the video.

(H/T Hot Air) As Baer makes clear, this bombing attempt arose out of an "organization" - a Yemeni al Qaeda cell - that was capable of both planning an operation to defeat airport security and building a sophisticated bomb. It was an attempt that only failed by the grace of God. Jihadist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was in direct contact with that 'organization' and the 'organization' presents an ongoing threat to America. Thus, to remain safe, the U.S. needs every piece of intelligence it can extract from Mr. Abdulmutallab about it. Yet the Obama administration is treating Abdulmutallab as a common criminal, not a prisoner of war. The Obama administration has already arraigned Abdulmutallab - indeed, the administration did it within two days of the attack. This means that Abdulmutallab now has a lawyer and nothing of timely intelligence value will be forthcoming. This is utter insanity.

To state again, under the rules of war, we have every right to hold combatants for the duration of hostilities. In other words, we are within our rights to hold Abdulmutallab until his age reaches triple digits so long as hostilities have not ceased. And we are within our rights to interrogate him for information every day he is in custody - no lawyers allowed, no constitutional rights at issue (well, but see Boumadiene). There is no reason whatsoever to put a combatant to trial unless you have an additional goal of trying them for war crimes and executing them. By placing this Abdulmutallab in the criminal system unnecessarily, Obama has kneecapped our ability to get actionable intelligence that might stop the next attack from this 'organization.' As bad as are all of the other issues surrounding this attempted bombing, this is the worst.